Integration 2 Integration Two Moreau First Year Experience December 3, 2021 Conquering Freshman Year: Community at Notre Dame This semester has taught me the importance of the people around me and communities I create. Much of what contributed to the exciting and fun semester I had we’re the friends I was able to make and lean on when school or college transitions became stressful. The first semester of college is known for being hard given all the changes freshman must navigate. Before coming to Notre Dame, I was fearful about juggling these changes, but within days, I discovered how supportive and balanced the community is. This helped me quickly find friends and upperclassmen mentors. When school became busier, responsibilities and extracurricular activities began, it was easy to get overwhelmed or feel behind on involvement around campus. My new friends and community helped comfort me, and our ability to create relationships early in the semester made it easier for us to be vulnerable about our stresses. This was very contrary to the experience with imposter system that Elizabeth Cox describes, “We each doubt ourselves privately, but believe we are alone in thinking that way because no one else voices their doubts” (“What is imposter syndrome and how can you combat it?” - Moreau FYE Week 9). Instead, I had a really eye opening conversation with my roommate and our friend about. We all talked about our stresses with making friends and trying to juggle each person’s feelings and find our avenue for success outside the classroom. We reflected on the added level of worry that silence had given. We felt like everyone else was balancing friends well and didn’t have the same fears for being not enough of a friend for different people, but the conversation showed how incorrect our personal doubt was. I was able to recognize that I need grace with all of the life changes college will bring. This has made me much happier, fulfilled and given me a new freedom that I appreciate. This was a great reminder for me especially since Notre Dame and college were and are still new. I was even able to lean on this conversation in the weeks following if stress and comparison brought me down. After this experience, I saw the importance of open, diverse discussion. I appreciated the connection between building community and practicing conversation that finds common ground to create vulnerability and comforting connection. I thought about ways I could make a more welcoming environment for people to feel comfortable discussing their beliefs and experiences in order to improve. I found the connection between polarization and dicrimination in community from American Magazine’s interpretation of imago Dei eye opening. As the American Magazine notes, “our schools [must] clearly embody dignity, belonging and justice for marginalized groups[, and] help our students transcend superficial differences and racial constructs by emphasizing our common humanity” (“Should Catholic Schools Teach Critical Race Theory?” by Christopher J. Devron S.J.- Moreau FYE Week 10). This nuanced connection is really important to improving the community and involving all students in Notre Dame because polarization and discrimination feed on eachother and attempting to solve each problem can agreevate the other. The article focused on the need to bring the two parts of this quote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQUxL4Jm1Lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQUxL4Jm1Lo https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/06/03/critical-race-theory-catholic-high-schools-black-lives-matter-240792 https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/06/03/critical-race-theory-catholic-high-schools-black-lives-matter-240792 together. I aim to make that my goal over my four years at Notre Dame. I hope to use this early understanding as my foundation. Inspired by my own experience navigating freshman year, I will take what I have learned about community and belonging in Moreau to better invite members of Notre Dame into the community. College provides the unique opportunity to put many people from different backgrounds and beliefs together for a conversation. Taking small steps now to make people comfortable sharing will help open more dialogue and teach important lessons for cultivating new relationships and growing community even after graduation. Another experience at Notre Dame that struck me was the ability of professors, students and other community members to remember unique details about me and individualize me as a reminder I was important to them. In Moreau FYE Week 11 another woman reflected on this phenomenon saying, “I have been to Europe a lot, and they pretty much know every country. They don’t mistake you; they don’t mix you up” (“With Voices True Snapshot Summary 2020” by the Klau Center). I found this quote to be a powerful reminder of the differences between my Notre Dame experience and others. Not all people have felt as accepted, welcomed and remembered as I have. Americans have become complacent in understanding other cultures, which negatively impacts our ability to build community with an international student body. This has also been a repeated theme in my comparative politics class as my professor has encouraged my classmates and I to break beyond selfish assumptions. I appreciated that this woman shared her own direct experience because it provided better insight into the ways I could live out a well-informed world view. I plan to take my experience and better live that out for all members. I can do my own research and ask my own compassionate questions. I will focus on seeing individuals and making unique conversations before assuming where they are from to create a community focused on individuals and embracing experiences not forcing conformity. After learning about the goals of Holy Cross education, the intentionality of my first-year experiences at Notre Dame and love within the community has not come as a surprise. I discovered the optimistic perspectives of Holy Cross education that work to connect us with God through a human perspective. Moreau was able to follow the teaching of “striving for completeness [by] spending [his] life as a citizen of this world imitating the person of Christ as the gateway to citizenship in heaven” (“Holy Cross and Christian Education” by Campus Ministry at the University of Notre Dame- Moreau FYE Week 12). I appreciated the way Moreau thoughtfully lived his life to create the Congregation of Holy Cross and care for students. He followed God’s love and values of family by paralleling the structure of the Holy Cross with the Holy Family. This also permeated into Holy Cross education in an effort to create family and emphasize the importance of community in the congregation for the rest of its time. I hope to learn to emulate this same love in my time at Notre Dame. To me, Moreau’s commitment to spreading the Catholic faith when it was waning and under fire is an example of God working through humans to show himself in times of struggle. Moreau set God’s example for how to act and love others. He had clear and ambitious goals to make the world better and worked hard to fulfill his goals by any means possible- even through long boat rides across the Atlantic. Moreau showed me the inspiration to set goals that, while lofty, are rooted in community and God. In conclusion, my first semester of freshman year was defined by a community and welcome unlike any other because of Notre Dame’s values and history. Now, it is my turn to do the same for others as my classmates continue to find their place on campus and over the next three years https://voicestrue.nd.edu/snapshot-summaries/ https://campusministry.nd.edu/assets/105621/ as freshmen arrive. I must take my own experience and new knowledge of the struggles others face to act as a force for good. Not everyone is afforded the same opportunities to enter the Notre Dame community, but my privilege to enter it gives me the important role of helping improve shortcomings to make a community that is open to all. I can also take these skills beyond Notre Dame into my life at home and after graduation.